Thread by @Katja_Thieme

Should be course planning, but I'm so easily distracted, I will comment for a moment on this Helen Pluckrose tweet. You can pass it up as a throw-away comment. But also, the implications of the throw-away comments pile up. Some obvious issues here are . . . 1/

1) If you're writing a book or blog posts or what have you about how critical theory fifty years ago is destroying current-day liberalism, I would you say you should show some interest in the way the concepts were conceived, defined, and contextualized at that time. 2/

2) But, hey, that I think that's necessary might just be me, a writing and discourse studies scholar who is historically inclined. No, wait, you are also trying to tell us academics how we should be doing our job? You better show some interest in it, too. 3/

3) Same applies if you were to study Islam and were trying to tell scholars how they should study Islam: show some interest in how ideas were understood across time, or, I would recommend showing some interest in what in this context you call "theological defenses." 4/

Otherwise you might sound like, you know, an ideologue. 5/

4) Finally, Helen, what is this parallel you drawing, exactly, between genital mutilation and homophobic killings and the effects of Foucault's work? What's your point in putting hate mutilation and murder against Foucault's concepts and their unnamed "raging" effects? 6/

Don't be so sheepish. Come out and say it. 7/

Helen's buddy. Much progressivism. Very intellect. 8/

#JamesLindsay is trying a new tack. He choose the path of extensive hoaxing with no serious scholarship and that didn’t get him any research credibility—must be his coming from a blue collar family that’s the reason others don’t see his lack of expertise as expertise!